


Home from Exile

by orchid314



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-17 13:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: It was a curious thing to lie before another human being like this. Holmes didn’t know if he should ever grow wholly accustomed to it.





	Home from Exile

The sea-coal burned bright. Holmes lay in his bed, too heavy to pull away when Watson knelt beside him. Watson began to wipe Holmes on his belly and his hips, with the cloth he had dipped in water from the pitcher and heated before the hearth-flames. He did so with concentration on his brow and with a gentleness of touch that made Holmes want to pull away. And yet he could not. He was buried too deep in the bed, the languour of their congress still upon him. The warmth of the cloth melted into his groin, into clammy skin and curled hair.

"We need to fatten you up," Watson whispered, running his hands up Holmes's thighs, greedily tracing passage across their flesh, as if he needed to commit their shape to memory. "It's been almost a year since your travels, and you're still skin and bones." It was a curious thing to lie before another human being like this. Holmes didn’t know if he should ever grow wholly accustomed to it.

Watson got up from the bed, draping the cloth over the edge of the basin on its stand. Holmes watched the muscles of his buttocks, the curve of them and how they moved and caught the secret firelight. In some strange fashion, the light revealed Watson as the conjuror Holmes suddenly knew him to be, the man who had summoned Holmes back from the dead with the stories he had published in the wake of the fall at Reichenbach. Had the very words willed him back to London, bringing him to this particular moment?

How eagerly had Holmes read Watson's tales while he was away, seeking to hide his trembling hand even from himself as he opened the latest packet sent to him by his brother Mycroft and found a new edition of the _Strand_. Reading the first of those tales–of the old conversations, Watson before him in the armchair with the heat of the fire lapping at his feet–had pierced Holmes like a dagger thrust that catches a man by surprise. He recognised the rush of feeling that ran through him but could not, or refused to, name it, as he let the journal drop onto the desk in front of him. But from that moment, he began to rue his exile and think of it with bitterness in his heart, and knew that he must return to London no matter the outcome.

Watson found his slippers, stepping into them. In these past months, he had lost all self-consciousness before the faded portraits of criminals that wavered in and out of the shadows on the walls. He opened the wardrobe, and turned to Holmes with raised eyebrows. Holmes nodded and Watson plucked out the crimson dressing gown, mischief creasing the corners of his eyes. 

"Come on, get dressed," Watson said as he brought the gown to the bed and put on Holmes's mouse-coloured dressing gown. "What? All done in, are you?" The garment was comically long on him, and it drew a smile of appreciation from Holmes. 

Watson made an elaborate mock bow and then proceeded to the door.

"Where are you going?" Holmes asked.

"To the kitchen! Didn't Mrs Hudson say she was leaving food for us while she was away?" Ah, yes. The day before their venerable landlady had launched into a condemnation of the fact that there was currently no housemaid to look after things while she went on a visit to her sister, and was it any wonder that they couldn't keep staff at 221B, what with the comings and goings that occurred at every hour, worse than it had ever been before Mr Holmes went away. Suits caked with Thames mud, and boots that had stepped in God knows what unsavoury substances. And that inspector who drank far too much of Mr Holmes's brandy for her liking. 

Watson ran from the room, tossing a "Come on, Sherlock!" over his shoulders. With a sigh Holmes pulled himself from the bed, threw on the gown, and lit one of the candle stubs from the little pile on the mantelpiece, then ran to catch up with the good doctor, who somehow possessed the night vision of a cat as he skipped down the stairs.

No one was given to extravagant eating in Baker Street, and indeed its inhabitants asked for nothing more than simple, stalwart British food. But it transpired that Mrs Hudson, despite her grumbling, had prepared them a splended veal and ham pie. There was a roast duck, too, covered with a tea towel, and another dish of cold new potatoes, flecks of parsley clinging to their shapes. And boiled eggs, enough to keep Holmes and Watson fed the entire weekend. Someone had even left them a lemon pudding, a particular favourite of Watson's. 

Back in Holmes's room, the plates and dishes balanced precariously on little mounds of the mattress, the blankets pushed to the edge. Watson sat tailor fashion, not bothering to cover himself with the folds of the dressing gown he had commandeered. Holmes propped himself up on an elbow. They had thrown more coal on the fire and it sputtered and snapped with a will of its own. 

Watson took another bite from a leg of duck. "Did you never plunder the larder as a child? With your brother? And steal back up to your room with the food?"

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

Watson regarded him, amusement in his eyes. "I can just about make out the child you must have been."

"Can you?" There came to Holmes the echoing corridors of his family's home, the black cliffs of Cornwall and the sea. His father absent on one of his frequent journeys. His mother, her long hands at her sides, as he bobbed a bow to her before dinner. The banishment to the nursery after the perfunctory conversation at table, Mycroft ramrod straight in his chair. Holmes's childhood had been an exile of its own, although he hadn't known it then. 

"Why aren't you eating, Sherlock?"

Holmes shrugged again. There was no reason.

"No, but you must eat," he insisted. "The pie is very good." Watson wiped the back of his hand across his moustache.

"Is this how you ate in the old days, around your campsites in the Hindu Kush?"

"We hadn't nearly so fine of fare as Mrs Hudson's meals. It was all tinned things. I remember when I arrived back in Portsmouth and ate a fresh orange on Christmas Day. It tasted like–like a new lease on life." Watson looked down at that, and Holmes could not make out his expression in the flickering light.

With reluctance Holmes speared a potato with his fork and took a small bite of it. For Watson's sake.

"Too bashful to eat in front of the lovely Bacon the Butcher and the corpse purveyors?" Watson cast a nod at the portraits that watched over them.

"I rather think they are the ones who have had reason to be flustered these past months."

"Why what ever do you mean?" 

"At your, well, exploits. Or at least at the freckles on your posterior," Holmes mused.

"My freckles! My dear Holmes, I blush at such remarks."

"Well, perhaps just the one freckle–the large one, in that particular spot. You know." Holmes tried to conceal his grin.

"The large one?!" Watson threw back his head in laughter, his Adam's apple stretching. "But of course you would notice it!" For some reason Holmes could not understand, he felt a corresponding delight bubble up within him. He looked in wonder at the man before him. At his throat with its remembered scent, dark and musky, and the arc of it. There were no more words. Only this moment. Plates and utensils plunging, peeled eggs tumbling, Holmes leaned in to kiss that beautiful line.


End file.
